The design talent that helped Ford defeat Ferrari was, and is, my friend Peter Brock .\u00a0 Peter has received\u00a0 several LIFETIME ACHIEVMENT awardS,\u00a0 recognizing his design work starting when he was a teenager.\u00a0 He penned the Cobra Daytona Coupe, which brought America its first and only F.I.A. Grand Touring Championship in 1965.\u00a0 He is now an entrepreneur, prize winning author and speaker.\u00a0 This reflects the love\u00a0 and respect the automobile world has for Peter and his work,\u00a0 including\u00a0 those early days\u00a0 when\u00a0 Carroll defeated Enzo.\u00a0\u00a0 I have a tee shirt \u00a0dated 1964 that says \u201cNEXT YEAR FERRARI\u2019S ASS IS MINE<\/strong>.\u201d\u00a0 Love it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This post features an interview I did with Peter for the\nShelby American Auto Club quarterly way back\nin the mid 70\u2019s. It still resonates\ntoday. Rick & the gang at S.A.A.C. were kind enough to dig out the old issue and\nsend me a scan.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n As Peter says in the interview, Shel was no dummy when it came to making a buck.\u00a0 By the decade of the 70\u2019s \u00a0he was no longer making Cobras, \u00a0no longer associated with Ford, and was watching a new industry known as \u201ckit cars\u201d \u00a0sell 427 Cobra bodies \u00a0and even completed cars with no questions asked.\u00a0 The now defunct magazine from which \u00a0I copied the \u00a0pictures below \u00a0listed 36 different companies selling\u00a0 Cobra bodies.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cGuaranteed to attract chicks, will fit any frame, even a VW floor pan.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Carroll came up with\nthe idea that under the legal term of TRADE DRESS<\/em><\/strong>, <\/em>which protects the appearance of a product (you can\u2019t sell a soft drink in a bottle that\nresenbles a Coke bottle) he ought to own\nthe shape of the 427 Cobra roadster, as well as the 289, the Daytona Coupe, and a few other Shelby\ncars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Car manufactures in that era were focused on THE FUTURE <\/em><\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0and didn\u2019t give a\u00a0\u00a0 _ _ _ _\u00a0\u00a0 about last year, much less 10 or 20 years ago. Owning the past was really unheard of in the business.\u00a0 Carroll thought otherwise, and after a few false starts and some expensive appeals,\u00a0 he\u00a0 began winning lawsuits\u00a0 and collecting judgments against the makers of Cobra knock-offs.\u00a0 The rest, as they say, is history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Today every car company has a Licensing Division, which sometimes brings them more dollars than selling \u00a0their cars, \u00a0with no risk or capital investment !! \u00a0When Hot Wheels makes a toy in the shape of\u00a0 a \u201957 Thunderbird, even if they don\u2019t use the name, \u00a0the good folks at Ford get a piece of the sales price.\u00a0\u00a0 Same with after market body panels.\u00a0 Even interior\u00a0 structural parts \u00a0that no one will ever see \u2026 if it resembles a piece that came out of a Ford stamping die in 1965, \u00a0you pay<\/strong><\/em> !\u00a0 My friends the Kirkhams, based in Provo UT, \u00a0just completed their 1,000th aluminum Cobra, and a part of the $100,000 (more or less) purchase price of each one goes to the modern day Shelby organization. \u00a0\u00a0Good on\u00a0 \u2018em.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What makes this car\nfrom the past worth all that money ? The\nShelby name comes with the love, life, death, brotherhood, that the Ford v Ferari movie celebrates. The past is still<\/strong> not past, and it now pays really<\/strong> good money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ol\u2019 Shel was one of\nthe first to recognize the sales potential of all that, especially when wrapped up in a beautiful body. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Er\u2026\u2026 maybe I should rephrase that. Anyway, until next time, thanks for listening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Duane<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hello again digital friends. To paraphrase William Faulkner, \u201cThe past is never dead, and today it pays good money.\u201d The success of the Ford v Ferrari\u00a0 movie \u00a0(4 Oscar nominations and 2 wins), which is set in the mid 60\u2019s, is a story of life, death, love and brotherhood, \u00a0all fueled by that universal solvent … Continue reading “Peter Brock Interview”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8gW0j-62","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mustangirs.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mustangirs.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mustangirs.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mustangirs.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mustangirs.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=374"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/mustangirs.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":382,"href":"http:\/\/mustangirs.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374\/revisions\/382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mustangirs.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mustangirs.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mustangirs.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mustangirs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/20200303-1.jpg?resize=691%2C1024\")
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